Michael_S:
Happy Halving Day!And my best wishes to all the BTCTC community and to the bitcoin project, and to all the contributors to the bitcoin ecosystem!

("Halving Day" happened 6 hours earlier than what I had predicted even just two days ago - maybe some ASIC manufacturers have already started making test runs in real-world-conditions [or have changed their business models?!? ;) ] and returned some share of the extra earnings in the form of extra-high transaction fees...)

For the friends of number mysticism:It happened on day 333 of the year 2012 (although I don't believe in things like --> this...).The average duration between two generated blocks turned out to be 9.774 minutes, which is quite precisely the same number as the lowest gravity that exist anywhere on earth (near the equator at higher altitudes) when expressed in m/sē. One may interpret nice and positive things into this for the future... ;-)For the friends of down-to-earth mathematics:Here is the original forecast of bitcoin creation, given an ideal generation rate of 1 block per 10 minutes:Code:

Here is the adjusted forecast of bitcoin creation, given a generation rate of 1 block per 9.774 minutes (assuming that hash power will continue growing in a similar way as it did up to now, such that difficulty adjustments will continue lagging behind a bit):Code:

And finally, here is the code in case you want to generate these outputs for yourself (runs on Matlab or GNU Octave):Code:

% Uncomment the PGP signature tags at the beginning and at the end of the file before verifying the signature

%-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----%Hash: SHA1

function blockreward(Time_in_minutes_per_block)% function blockreward()% function blockreward(Time_in_minutes_per_block)%% Time_in_minutes_per_block = The average time that it takes the bitcoin network for generating one block.% * Default (no argument) : 10.000% * Average till first block reward halving on 28 Nov 2012 : 9.774%% ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------% This m-function calculates the bitcoin generation over time when assuming that the block genertion rate% matches a fixed value of e.g. 10 minutes per block.% Note that in practice the actual block generation rate will likely be a little faster because the total% hashing power of the bitcoin network increases continuously while the difficulty is only adjusted every% 2016 blocks (=ca. 2 weeks) and therefore always lags behind the actual hashing power.% Therefore, for the time period from the start of the bitcoin network until the first halving of the% block reward, it took only 3.90 instead of 3.99 years, corresponding to an average of 9.774 instead of% 10.000 minutes per generated block.% ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------% According to the Bitcoin protocol:%% Every 210000 blocks the blockreward halfs.%% Average block generation rate = 1 block per 10 minutes,% (difficulty adjusted every 2016 blocks = ca. every 2 weeks).%% Starting block reward = 50 BTCs.%% On 3 January 2009 at 18:15:05 UTC bitcoin block generation has started (creation of ths "genesis block"):% http://blockexplorer.com/block/000000000019d6689c085ae165831e934ff763ae46a2a6c172b3f1b60a8ce26f% http://blockchain.info/block-height/0% On 28 November 2012 at 15:24:38 UTC block number 210000 was generated, the first block with block% reward halved to 25 BTC:% http://blockexplorer.com/block/000000000000048b95347e83192f69cf0366076336c639f9b7228e9ba171342e% http://blockchain.info/block-height/210000% http://blockchain.info/block-index/322335/000000000000048b95347e83192f69cf0366076336c639f9b7228e9ba171342e%% 1 day = 24*60 = 1440 minutes, and 1 year = 365.25 days in this file.%% The smallest unit is 1 satoshi = 1e-8 BTC.%% ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------% This script works with Matlab (tested with R2007b) and GNU Octave 3.0.0 (tested with version 3.0.0)%% Written on Planet Earth on 28 Nov 2012 = Day 333 of the year 2012,% by Michael_S of bitcointalk.org (PGP key 0xCC7E7C99, bitcoin:14ajM1BHY7E8GJ4DGGvtFFGmE15hSSSRJR)% ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------